There are a number of character tags used in Warhammer 40k posts that refers to occupations or factions. Note all of these are chartags...

post #1662794 has commissar which is a rank (a political officer) Imperial guard which is an army and orkz which is a race (alias to orc?).

post #421653 has dreadnought which is a type of mecha, Adeptus mechanicus which is a faction, tech priest which is an occupation in said faction and skull probe which is a type of item.

I have also found Space marines which is complicated since the Adeptus Astartes are not Space marines as described in the wiki and all but one posts depict the Warhammer 40k version.
Space marine has a few more posts that are not 40k but most of them are.

There is also ultramarines, space wolves, blood angels, dark angels, black templars, grey knights and several more that are factions of the warhamer 40k space marines.

Eldar, Tyranid and Necron are races for lack of a better term. Space elfs, alien insect dinosaurs and undead terminator robots respectively. 40k is weird...

Shouldnt they be general tags or in some cases be aliased to their non specific tag like orc?

Side question I can only see one of the necron posts. Are all of the rest loli?

ion288 said:

Side question I can only see one of the necron posts. Are all of the rest loli?

No, they're just deleted

There is still a lot of grey area in the divide between character tags and general tags. Character classes as character tags is common with some series, particularly if there is a specific appearance to them that is tied to a specific copyright. Similar happens for some series with unique or unique versions of races tied to a specific copyright. Mecha also I feel of late is more commonly tagged as characters, unlike vehicles that are generally commonly tagged general (perhaps the humanoid shape helps a lot).

Beings, races, and classes, especially those that do not exist (or at least aren't a common concept) in the real world, tend to more likely be tagged as a character tag as opposed to a general tag. I believe that has to do with the fact that the character tag is simply a tag identifying beings or occasionally things that possess a unique identifiable appearance from others (other concepts are more likely to run into conflicting examples) and this tends to be expanded out when tied to a series. A series essentially anchors them in a manner that it's easier to perceive beings (or things) that are a part of a group as more like individuals than as a larger general concept. Plenty of "mob" characters and monsters tend to share similar features and appearance, such as goomba or stormtrooper, but tend to be treated as individual beings in the image. By treating them as individual beings within the image we tend to want to consider them a unique identity or "character" as opposed to simply a general concept like a race, class, or costume.

Personally I think "Character" would be better renamed "Identity", as such tags are really identifying various identities present in the image and some identities aren't bound by a specific individual or "character". An example of that is the Kirschwasser tag. The (nick)name while treated as an individual character actually applies to what would be more like a race. There is more than one Kirschwasser, and the term refers to an entire line of manufactured human-like beings, but like many manufactured products they all possess the same appearance. The tag is thus really indicating the identity of a being present in the image, as opposed to a individual "character", but I believe no one would agree that they should be put as a general tag.

I think it's fine to leave the current 40K class/race tags in the character category. On top of what NWF Renim said, the art in general doesn't feature named characters very often, but rather generic members of the various factions and races.

I do believe the space marines and space marine tags need to be reworked though. Currently they both appear to tag the same concept. I suggest redefining space marines to refer to 40K Space Marines only, as that's essentially how the tag is already being used. Perhaps rename it to space_marines_(warhammer_40k) to avoid confusion. Further, I recommend space marine become the tag for generic sci-fi space marines, as there are already a few such posts using the tag. It might then be worth changing the category of the tag to general, since it's no longer tied to a specific copyright.

Seeing that many sister of battle images have adepta sororitas tag on (which is supposed to be the official term), maybe adepta sororitas should be made into the green character tag and have sister of battle alias to it. Same thing can be done to the space marines: have the official term adeptus_astarte as the character tag, and have maybe space_marines_(warhammer_40k) alias to it. In this way space marine can be free up for other things.

Should I start renaming space marines and the appropriate space marines to adeptus astartes? This is what they are called in universe whilst space marines is more of a marketing term for selling figurines.

Also should I tag eldar posts with elf? By our standard thats what they are.

Edit: how do I make the adepta sororitas into a char tag?

ion288 said:

Also should I tag eldar posts with elf? By our standard thats what they are.

Edit: how do I make the adepta sororitas into a char tag?

Should probably stick to just using the pointy_ears tag (where applicable), as opposed to tagging them as elves. While they're essentially elves in space, they don't actually state they're elves and there are a lot of other fictional races that's visual trait is really only pointy ears.

To make a character tag can either input it as char:adepta_sororitas when editing an image's tags or can go into the tag tab at the top, pull up the tag in question, select edit, and then change its category type.